Forum-member Skei made us happy with a free downloadable book with 557 well-known standards. I find them mostly to be correct. It's in this thread (and for free!):
http://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/compi...dards-pdf.html
I bought the Hal Leonard Realbook 6th Edition vol. I & II and they suit me very well. I bought the mini-editions (very handy! But not for the near-sighted amongst us....), and with these two in my guitar-bag I can manage most of the time. You can get them at Amazon for 18 bucks per book.
Be carefull though, because they made quite a few corrections in chords and staffs and I found out at jamsessions people are so used to the older versions of the Realbooks that the older, incorrect versions are mostly played (Footprints is a notorious example).
And for some reason, some standards that are quite common are left out (the probably put them in volume III). I made a little suplement from the older realbooks and fakebooks and put it in (just copied it double sided and put it in the binder).
These songs are missing in the 6th edition vol. I en II:
- Ain't Misbehaving
- Alone Together
- Along Came Betty
- As Time Goes By
- A Foggy Day
- Besame Mucho
- Cry Me A River
- Days Of Wine And Roses
- East Of The Sun
- Green Dolphin Street
- Just Friends
- Milesstones
- Naima
- Night and Day
- Samba de Orpheus
- Sister Sadie
- Summertime
- Watermelon Man
But if you buy vol. I, II & III you should have every standard there is and be ready for some 60 bucks...
By the way, to see which song is in which book, this is a nifty gadget:
http://www.seventhstring.co.uk/fbindex.html